February 17, 2009
Typical Oz press not bothering to keep up with what is happening in New Zealand. I’m sitting here typing away on “what could be” here in Australia, and NZ is about to hit some of this head-on shortly. In brief from Internet Blackout N.Z:
“Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act assumes Guilt Upon Accusation and forces the termination of internet connections and websites without evidence, without a fair trial, and without punishment for any false accusations of copyright infringement. We should speak out against injustices like Guilt Upon Accusation being done in the name of artists and protecting creativity.”
Read the rest here. Join the N.Z Internet Blackout protest to show your support.
A blog again instead of ‘news’ site plays it out. Has any Australian IT news site talked about what is happening in NZ? I suppose tomorrow they will all have the big scoop and credit themselves after this post. And we know you read posts here IT ‘news’ writers between reporting on the latest vendor security surveys.
Rehashing this stuff again, and again, I put my questions to those who have created or are about to create laws or precedent, (dependent upon whether you are in NZ or Oz). The comments below are in the context of the iiNet case (as per previous posts here), related to Oz issues, but surely they are similar to what is happening in NZ:
http://beastorbuddha.com/2009/02/12/latest-on-the-iinet-piracy-lawsuit/
1. “Here’s a thought iiNet: regardless of not having the technology in place to “filter” and “approve” everything that goes through you, how can an ISP make a determination to a 100% level of confidence that something is illegal without bringing each instance of it to some form of “trial”? Is that within iiNet’s legal boundaries? Of course not. Isn’t that enough to throw this out of court? I don’t profess to knowing the law in this regard well enough so take my comments with a grain of salt, but if I have already purchased a song or movie, is it illegal for me to download that same song or movie from the Net? How can an ISP make that call on what is legal or illegal activity? What technology exists to do this? None. Yes, again, I acknowledge piracy happens, but how can an ISP be held accountable for something they cannot judge at the time? Suspicion then would mean disconnecting many legitimate users from the Net and requesting the appropriate authorities investigate. Resources? Yeah….think about that. I could go on and on but hopefully you get my drift here.”
2. “More thoughts….so what and where is the crime? Would love to know the plaintiff’s position on this. If I hold a legal copy and download something I already own, is the crime downloading an “illegal” copy? But hey, I already own it. So in that case, why is the ISP liable if the website is the perpetrator? So many tangents this could go on to the extent that common sense should dictate the result. But, as mentioned, common sense doesn’t always win out.”
2002 but interesting read still:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/journals/MurUEJL/2002/51.html?
@DDrazic,
yeah good link. Some interesting arguments about direct, vicarious & contributory liability.
There’s more than enough liability argy-bargy material in those arguments to keep the legal wig’s money meters ticking away for months, unfortunately.
If only there were a Court of ‘common sense’, we’d all be the richer, in every sense of the word.